so no one told you life was gonna be this way
by hyacinthian
Summary: This is all Quinn's fault. FinnRachel.


Finn likes to interrupt her at the strangest times. And Rachel Berry is nothing if not a creature of habit. So when her phone starts buzzing just as she's halfway through the first verse of recording a song for her MySpace, she's a little annoyed. Doesn't he understand that her fans _expect_ this MySpace video? And what kind of artist is she if she doesn't produce her art on _time_? People don't react well to delays and she is _never_ late.

The first couple texts are because of school. They're in the same math class and he always asks her questions because he knows she's on top of things. (She is, after all, like number 5 in the class. And that number's off because the only other people above her are those who study like all of the time and she has more obligations to her _music_, obviously.)

"What's arcsine?"  
"What's the assignment?"  
"When is this due?"

She's got it all written down in her planner even though she has it memorized. It's important to be organized.

Sometimes his texts aren't about school. He apologizes for one of Quinn's comments on her MySpace page once or twice, though she doesn't think it's anything more than Finn just being Finn. He's honest and compassionate and he _cares_ about people. He would do this for anyone.

When she loses her voice to strep, he texts her once in the morning: don't freak out, rach.

She doesn't really know what to think. He's never called her Rach in person, and she has to wonder why he did it. After all, the character limit for texts is a lot bigger than the 21 he used in his message, so it's not like he couldn't stick in the extra two letters. She doesn't think that much about it, honestly. (He does get a mention in her journal entry for that day.)

And once during rehearsal from across the auditorium, she gets another text from him. She just moves to where he is and sits next to him. "Finn, I'm across the room. Was it that important to send me a joke about a dog?"

His lips just twitch. "You looked like you needed a joke."

She frowns a little. "I can't believe Mr. Schu is actually considering 'Living on a Prayer.' I mean, we already have a song about underprivileged people from the wrong side of the tracks longing for something better."

"It's Bon Jovi, Rach." He absentmindedly doodles in his notebook as he talks. "They're awesome."

"We won't make it to regionals with just power ballads. We should show our range."

He laughs. "Regionals is like months away."

"We should be prepared."

"You think we have a shot?"

"At winning?"

"Yeah."

She bites her lip, caught between what she _wants_ to say will happen and what she thinks will actually happen. "It's going to be a lot of work and no one in the school wants this to happen." She looks up at him, into his eyes, and for a second, it _does_ feel like the movie she wants her life to be, and all she has to do is lean in and kiss him, because she's the beautiful, young ingénue destined for stardom and he's the football player with a heart of gold and it's all so _inspirational_ that everyone will definitely root for them.

She doesn't kiss him and he doesn't say anything and they just sit there, looking at each other. He looks away for a second, cracking open his textbook, and she clears her throat. "Did you do the—" he starts.

"Do you need help with the—" she asks.

They talk about secants and radians the rest of the break.

-

He does things to piss her off sometimes. Like when Mr. Schu has finished arranging a new song and she's trying it out and he taps his pencil in the corner, staring blankly at his notebook. She always turns and yells at him, "Finn, you are not tapping with the beat and it is _very_ hard to focus. Would you mind?" He always smirks when he puts his pencil away.

When she gets angry, her cheeks kind of turn pink and he doesn't know why he knows that, except he does and he thinks she looks nice like that. (Quinn would kill him if she knew.)

-

She's checking her e-mail one day when the MySpace messages pop up again. Quinn and her cronies have only gotten more vicious since Finn's perceived move to the dark side and her latest rendition of "Defying Gravity" has only incited their attention. She wants to think that one day, she _will_ be famous and rich with adoring fans and Quinn will be trapped in Lima as some kind of weather presenter, pregnant and unhappy, but with the day she's having, it doesn't really come to her mind as clearly as it usually does.

She excuses herself to go to the bathroom (and he gets the slight feeling that maybe something is wrong).

He texts her: "hey, u ok?"

When she doesn't respond, he runs to the bathroom, nearly colliding with her in the hallway. "Hey, Finn," she says, calmly. "Is rehearsal over?"

"Uh, no," he mumbles.

"I hope they didn't skip over my part," she says, marching back to the auditorium. He watches her retreating form with surprise, deciding to text her a joke anyway.

_Two peanuts walk into a bar. One was a salted._

That's so corny.

I think you mean nutty.

They text terrible puns back and forth the rest of the day.

-

He wakes up with a start in the middle of the night when he dreams of her. It wasn't Rachel, but it looked like Rachel and kind of talked like Rachel without all the crazy rambling, but it couldn't have been her.

But she was dressed like…not Rachel. This tight black dress and these librarian glasses, her hair pinned up. And he was just sitting in the library, staring at his trig homework all confused, like he always does. She just walked up to him, unpinned her hair and shook it out (like in the movies) and leaned in, her lips brushing against his ear, as she whispered, "Is there anything I can help you with?" She totally would never say that.

Except she did. And then she started, well, _undressing_, and really, it's because he's been spending more time with her than he used to back when he didn't really know who she was. That has to be it, right?

When he goes down to the kitchen to grab a glass of ice water (he has to have caught the flu or something, he's really, really _warm_ and it's almost _December_), it hits him. _This is totally Quinn's fault_. Because as president of the Chastity Club, she hasn't exactly been satisfying him and she's his girlfriend.

His mind flashes back to Rachel in that black dress and those librarian glasses—

(He doesn't think of her that way. They're friends. It's a weird friendship, but still)

When he goes back to bed, that image of Rachel is still burned into his mind. He opens his eyes, stares at the ceiling.

_This is totally Quinn's fault._


End file.
